The scientific and finance fields of behavioral economics and neuroeconomics provide evidence of how our normal cognitive and neural mental processes cause us to make choices that often work against us economically. In large part, the cause is the subconscious functions of the brain delegating choices, for which we're not aware. Our biological and neurological designs influence choices, preferences, and behavior.
On the other hand, consumers commonly subconsciously succumb to temptations and make regrettable financial decisions even though their intuitions or “inner voices” alert them to the potential pitfalls of the judgments used to make their decisions. Despite the warnings of their intuitions, by participating in any of these adverse behaviors, the user consumer has engaged in “undisciplined economic behavior”.
Either way, undisciplined financial behavior, puts a strain on resources and can easily derail a consumer's economic goals and life outcomes. The behavioral influences of undisciplined financial behavior, such as instant gratification,—emotional spending, or keeping up with the Jones', can keep a consumer from making choices based on other more important life values, such as, for example, family, spiritual relationship, creative pursuits, or a secure and comfortable retirement lifestyle. Economic improvement is a challenge for many people because behavioral change is difficult. Because of the way our brains are designed, there exist a competing inverse relationship between our deliberate, intentional decisions and our brain's penchant toward reactive, habitual and emotionally-driven behaviors. The emotional and subconscious functions of our brain both dominate and influence its reflective logical functions. Behavior patterns that impact our economic outcomes are highly susceptible to this brain phenomenon. The dominance of emotional functions is responsible for the disconnect experienced when a person's financial behaviors remain out of alignment with their goals and the limitations of their resources. The disconnect causes cognitive dissonance. Although, we're mostly not conscious of this emotional dominance, eventually we experience cognitive dissonance when our financial decisions violate our truest intentions, and measurable stress results in our bodies. According to the cognitive dissonance theory, a person seeks to keep their life expectations and their reality aligned. In order to alleviate the resulting discomfort, one is driven to change either their cognition or their behavior. More often than not, it is cognition that is temporarily modified to support the behavior. As a result, consumers persist in their default mode toward habitual and short-term reward seeking patterns of behavior that fail to fulfill to satisfy inherently motivated desires.
It may be desirable to provide a program and method that, when implemented by the user or assisting financial planner or coach, serves to help improve economic decisions and behaviors that ultimately bring the user's financial behaviors into alignment with their values, vision goals, priorities, and planned intentions.
It may further be desirable to provide an apparatus and method that instantaneously and dynamically, during or following a financial transaction or a financial decision, detects a consumer's propensity to engage in emotion driven financial behavior based on the user's biological data. It may also be desirable to provide an apparatus and method that performs a comparative analysis that ensures that the consumer is using his or her resources in a manner that is consistent with the user's true values, goals, priorities, and intentions.
It may further be desirable to provide an apparatus and method that enables a user to develop economic objectives financial goals and economic objectives that combine a traditional system of economic guidance with a values-focused system of economic guidance to facilitate a modification in financial behaviors and economic decision making. It may also be desirable to provide an apparatus and method that performs a computational analysis to determine whether the user's financial decision or financial transaction is adverse to the user's financial planning goals. If the financial decision or financial transaction is adverse, the devices and methods provide a stimulatory effect to the user to mitigate the adverse financial decision or facilitate a future modification in financial behaviors and decisions based on the user's specific financial priorities.